The Trojan Colt Page 9

  “No problem,” responded Berger. “If it’s carrying a Kentucky plate, we’ll have all the information when they send me the number.”

  “Good,” I said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the kid was hiding—and doing a damned good job of it.”

  “Why would he hide?”

  “Why would he disappear? He loved his work and he had a good-looking girlfriend.”

  “Maybe he was unhappy because he was about to lose the Trojan colt.”

  I shook my head. “He loves the horses, but I don’t think he loved the horse, if you see what I mean.”

  “I see it,” replied Berger. “The question is: Did he see it?”

  “I spent a couple of days with him,” I said. “He struck me as a young man who had his head screwed on right.”

  His computer beeped, and he turned to look at the screen, where a message was coming in. He stared at it, frowned, and reached for his phone. He punched out three numbers, which implied that it was an inter-department call, waited for a minute, then said: “Hello. This is Lou Berger . . . yeah, I got your message. I just wanted to call to confirm it. Will you read it aloud to me?” He waited a moment, still frowning, then said, “Thanks,” and hung up the phone.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We had some rain last night,” he began. “Did it hit you before you got to your motel?”

  “Yeah, I drove back through it,” I said.

  “It rained two or three more times during the night.”

  “Okay, it rained,” I said. “What does that have to do with the license plate?”

  “We found it and the car,” Berger said. “A 1998 Plymouth Prowler.”

  He was still frowning.

  “What else?” I said.

  “It was parked at a Kroger supermarket over near Leestown Road. Been there for a couple of days. No one minded. Happens all the time at stores with big parking lots, like Kroger and Walmart. Guy’s taking a plane trip and doesn’t want to pay airport parking, so he parks there and has a friend drop him at the terminal. They probably wouldn’t have reported it for another week, but they were worried because the top was down and it was getting rained on.”

  “Where’s Leestown Road?” I asked.

  He shook his head sadly. “Not near any friend he’s got, not near the blonde’s apartment, not near any farm he’s ever worked at.”

  “Well, he sure as hell didn’t take a plane anywhere,” I said. “Kid didn’t have two cents to rub together.”

  “Could he have borrowed it?”

  “From a couple of friends who haven’t seen him in over a week, or a girl who’s worried sick about him and has no idea where he is?” I replied. “I doubt it like all hell.”

  “So he probably didn’t run away, and he hasn’t thought to pick up his car,” said Berger, and I could see that he was thinking the same thing I was.

  “Okay,” I said. “I need answers to two questions. The first is what the hell he was doing at or near that Kroger. There have to be closer ones if all he wanted was to buy some food.”

  “And the second?”

  “Who wanted him dead and why?”

  “You think?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think. And you?”

  “Makes sense.” He leaned back on his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “We’ll help you any way we can, Eli, and of course we’ll kept this quiet until we officially know for a fact that he’s dead.” He grimaced. “But it feels right.”

  I sighed heavily. “Yeah, it does.”

  “Well, I guess we’re about to find out how good a detective you are,” he said. “You’ve eliminated Horatio Jimenez. That leaves just three hundred thousand suspects and a body—if there’s a body.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I had to be a detective. Hell, I could be pitching for the Reds right now.”

  “You were a ballplayer?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Then I don’t understand.”

  I flashed him a totally humorless smile. “How much harder could it be than this?”

  They towed the car into their garage in less than an hour, and I stopped by to look it over. Not that I expected to find anything useful.

  It was a 1998 Prowler, pretty beat up. The left front bumper had been caved in by another car, not enough to affect the wheel, but fixing it would have cost more than the car was worth on the market. Air-conditioning wasn’t working. Tony (or a previous owner) had torn the seat belts out and knew enough about cars so that there were no annoying flashing lights or beeping sounds because the belts weren’t fastened. There was a CD player and a ton of the junk that passes for music these days. And the car had logged 262,407 miles and was still running.

  The top was down, which is the only way it would have been reported in less than a week or two. I checked the mechanism, and it was working. I remembered back to the night he vanished. It was clearly going to rain, probably had already sprinkled some, which meant Tony didn’t figure to be wherever he was for long or he’d have put the top up.

  My next stop was Mill Creek, where I had Standish get one of Bigelow’s house flunkies to print out the addresses of everyone who’d worked for him for the past half year. I didn’t know my way around Lexington very well, so I headed back to the station, showed the list to MacDonald, who’d shown up while I was gone, and asked him to put a mark next to anyone who lived within a few blocks of the Kroger lot, on the assumption that since he had a car, Tony wouldn’t have walked more than two or three blocks from where he left it.

  “Are you sure this is the entire list?” asked MacDonald after he’d studied it.

  “I’m sure it’s the entire list that they gave me,” I replied. “I can’t swear that it’s complete or accurate, but I assume it is, because it’d be so easy to prove he left something off.”

  He handed the paper back to me. “I hate to tell you this, Eli, but not a single address on this list is within walking distance of the Kroger where he left the car.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “I’m not a stranger to Lexington.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered. “The kid was worried. He told his girl, he told me. I’ve got a feeling he’s dead. He was somewhere between worried and scared the night he vanished. Why the hell did he drive to that particular lot, when none of his friends lived near there, Standish and Bigelow live on the farm, his parents are on the other side of town, so who the hell’s left?”

  “I ran a check on him last night,” offered MacDonald. “No arrests, one speeding ticket a year ago, as far as we know he never ran with a gang.”

  “Why there?” I persisted. “If he thought his life was in danger, and he couldn’t confide in anyone, he had a car—so why didn’t he just take off and put five hundred miles between himself and Lexington by sunrise?” I paused, trying to come up with an answer. “I don’t suppose there’s a bus station anywhere near there?”

  MacDonald shook his head. “Sorry, but no.”

  “Maybe I’d better drive over there and take a look for myself,” I said.

  “What are you looking for?”

  I sighed. “Damned if I know,” I admitted. “But that’s where he thought to run or hide, so that’s where I should at least look around.” Then I got an idea. “Before I go, can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure,” said MacDonald. “What is it?”

  “Find out if Tony had a credit card.”

  “Give me half a minute,” he said. He activated his computer, and soon his fingers were flying over the keys. I envied him. I could barely type my name back in high school, I didn’t get any better when I was with the Chicago police force, and I finally decided that computers and I were, if not mortal enemies, then at least destined never to be friends or partners.

  “Okay,” he said, looking up.

  “Okay what?” I asked.

  “Tony didn’t have a credit card.”

  “Shit!” I sai
d. “Then there’s no way to find out if he bought anything at Kroger’s.”

  “They’re a supermarket, Eli,” he said with a smile. “They don’t sell bullets.”

  “If he bought some food and didn’t take it out to his car, he was clearly walking it to wherever he went next,” I said. “It would mean he did know someone within walking distance.”

  MacDonald nodded his head. “You got a point,” he agreed. “You don’t bring food to guys who are threatening your life.”

  “I might as well get started.”

  “It’s evening.”

  “A lot of the Cincinnati Krogers are open around the clock,” I said. “Maybe this one is, too. Besides, it’s still a few hours before midnight, even if it closes.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not going to learn anything at the Kroger,” he said. “But if you wander around the neighborhood in the dark, it won’t be long before someone reports you to the police.”

  “They didn’t report Tony,” I said, and then realized there was a difference. “Of course, he knew where he was going, or at least I have to assume he did.” I got to my feet. “Thanks for your help, Drew.”

  “Get something definite and we’ll do more than help,” he promised.

  “I’ll count on that,” I said. “I’m just a detective. Being a hero is another union.”

  We shook hands, and I began walking to the exit.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” asked Bernice with a smile.

  “Don’t you?” I replied, returning the smile.

  “I’m getting time and a half until they hire more help,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I’m not getting shot at. I consider that even better than time and a half.”

  She laughed, and then I was out the door and into the Ford. I started it, turned the Reds-Pirates game on the radio, pulled a Lexington street map out of my glove compartment, and studied it for a minute. I knew that Bill Striker insisted that his entire staff have GPSs in their cars, but the few times I’d been in a car with one, I found it intrusive as all hell, like your mother-in-law looking over your shoulder and telling you to turn here and stop there.

  I began driving, accidently ran a red light when the Pirates’ center fielder made a circus catch and robbed Joey Votto of a bases-clearing double, but in a few minutes I was at the Leestown Road Kroger. I pulled into the lot, got out of the car, looked around (though I had no idea what I was looking for), and finally entered the store.

  It looked like any other Kroger—huge and efficient. I saw an Hispanic stock boy—well, his hair was gray, but I’ve never been able to think of the guy who puts Cheerios and Special K on the shelves as a stock man—and I walked over to him.

  “I’m looking for something,” I said.

  “I’ll be happy to help you, sir,” he replied.

  “Good,” I said. “Where’s the nearest horse farm?”

  He looked puzzled for a minute. “This is a joke, right, sir?” he said at last.

  “No,” I answered. “Let me word it differently. Is there a horse farm within half a mile of here?”

  He just shook his head and stared at me as if I might start taking off my clothes any second.

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, walking to the exit before he could sound some hidden alarm.

  I walked directly to my car, found out that Brandon Phillips had tied the score with a shot into the left field bleachers, and started driving.

  It was a nice neighborhood, not as upscale as some, but nicer than anything I’d ever lived in. I began crisscrossing it for half a mile in each direction, first north-south, then east-west. Then I drove in a square around it.

  “Damn it!” I muttered. “You were scared. You probably knew your life was in danger. You don’t have any friends on any of the streets I just drove down. You couldn’t talk to me. You couldn’t talk to Nan. You couldn’t talk to your parents. You felt you had to leave a three-million-dollar yearling behind, just to drive here, and . . . and what? Who did you see when you knew you were in trouble, and why don’t we have any record of him?”

  I drove around another half hour, looking at every house, every store, every outbuilding, and when I finally turned the car around and headed back to the Motel 6, I still didn’t know.

  I dragged myself out of bed, drove by the laundry to pick up my shirts, socks, and underwear, went back to the motel long enough to shave, shower, and change, and then stopped by the police station, where MacDonald was just putting his desk in order prior to going home.

  “You should have been here four or five hours ago, Eli,” he said. “Lots of excitement.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “Two drunks we pulled in tried to kill each other.” He smiled. “They were so far gone that we just let ’em swing. I don’t think either of them came within eighteen inches of connecting with the other, but it wore them out enough that they became tractable enough to lock ’em away in separate cells so they can sleep it off.”

  “You want to see some real action,” I replied, “come to a tailgate party at Paul Brown Stadium when the Bengals are playing.”

  “Certainly more action there than on the field, from what I read,” he replied. Then: “So are you just stopping by to invite me to breakfast, or is there something I can do for you?”

  “I went over to Leestown Road last night,” I said.

  “And didn’t turn up a thing?” he asked.

  “Right.”

  “I hate to say I told you so.”

  “There’s a connection there somewhere,” I said. “He had to have a reason to go there.” I sighed. “I just haven’t been able to find it.”

  “And you think you’ll find it here?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Then what do you think we can do for you?”

  “I’m just looking for connections,” I said. “Any connection.”

  He frowned. “I don’t follow you, Eli.”

  “I want to see your file on Billy Paulson.”

  “The groom Tony Sanders replaced?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any reason to think something happened to Paulson?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “But you’re hoping you might find a reason?”

  I sighed. “I’m just hoping to find any kind of connection at all, besides the fact that they worked for Mill Creek and were in charge of the same horse.”

  “What the hell,” he said. “I’ll have my computer give you a printout on everything we’ve got on him, and while it’s doing that I’ll walk you over to the Evidence Room.”

  I frowned. “Evidence Room?” I repeated. “Then you think there was a crime.”

  “No. But nobody’s stepped forward to claim the stuff we pulled out of his room at Mill Creek, and we had to stash it somewhere. Besides, this isn’t Chicago or Manhattan,” he added with a smile. “We don’t have that many crimes, so we don’t have that much evidence lying around.”

  “Lead the way,” I said.

  “Okay,” he replied, getting to his feet and leading me down a corridor. “But if I help you find the kid, I want ten percent of your fee.”

  “No one’s paying me a cent to find Billy Paulson,” I replied. “That being the case, I will happily give you fifteen percent of nothing.”

  “And a breakfast.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “The best breakfast Tilly makes, as long as it’s under five dollars.”

  He chuckled. “Welcome to 1972,” he said. “They tell me there’s a really good-looking two-year-old out there called Secretariat.”

  He stopped at a door, pulled a card out of his pocket, inserted it, and the door slid open silently, revealing a room that seemed composed almost entirely of metal shelves. It took MacDonald a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for, but finally he uttered a grunt of satisfaction, pulled down a cardboard box with “Billy Paulson” written
on it with a Magic Marker, and handed it to me.

  “The light’s pretty poor here,” I said. “You mind if I look at it in your office?”

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Jack Greenwald is on vacation. Give me a minute to clear it, and you can have his office for the next eight days, if you give me your word you won’t open any drawers or file cabinets. They’re all locked anyway.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll have his computer activated too. You don’t know his password, so you won’t be able to access his files.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t bother.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. Give me a couple of minutes.”

  He left the Evidence Room and was back in about five minutes.

  “No problem,” he announced. “We called Jim Simmons again, and he hasn’t decided to hate you since we spoke to him two days ago. Also, my boss had heard about that thing you pulled off a while back, the one that started with a show dog and ended somewhere in Mexico.”

  Actually, it had ended in Cincinnati, but I wasn’t allowed to say so, so I just smiled, thanked him, and followed him to Jack Greenwald’s office, which was a carbon copy of Berger’s and MacDonald’s offices.

  “The door will lock behind you, so you can just leave the box on the desk when you’re done. Any time you want to access it again, just ask Bernice for a key card; I’ll make sure she’s got one for you.”

  “Will do,” I said. “And thanks again, Drew.”

  “Television and the movies to the contrary, we’re on the same side,” he replied as he left the office and closed the door behind him.

  I put the box on the desk, then sat down on Greenwald’s swivel chair and removed the box’s top. There wasn’t much there, but I began going through it piece by piece, not knowing what I was looking for, just hoping something might trigger an idea.

  Right on top of the little pile were a couple of paperback porn books, which at least meant he was healthy and he could read. There was a copy of Sports Illustrated, which meant that unlike Tony he at least had a passing interest in sports other than horse racing. There was a birthday card from what I assumed were his parents, or maybe an aunt and uncle: Robert and Wilma Paulson. Whoever they were, they lived in Connecticut. Another card—unsigned—from Mill Creek Farm and a third one from someone named Hal Chessman. It seemed bigger than the others, so I pulled it all the way out of the envelope and looked at it. It was a picture of a pudgy, balding guy holding a horse by the halter, and inscribed on it was “Take good care of my Derby winner” along with Chessman’s signature. I made a mental note to find out who this Chessman was.